[T]he newly disclosed private exchanges among climate scientists at Britain's Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia reveal an intellectual circle that appears to feel very much under attack, and eager to punish its enemies.

In one e-mail, the center's director, Phil Jones, writes Pennsylvania State University's Michael E. Mann and questions whether the work of academics that question the link between human activities and global warming deserve to make it into the prestigious IPCC report, which represents the global consensus view on climate science.

"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report," Jones writes. "Kevin and I will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

In another, Jones and Mann discuss how they can pressure an academic journal not to accept the work of climate skeptics with whom they disagree. "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal," Mann writes.

"I will be emailing the journal to tell them I'm having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor," Jones replies.

Proving bad behavior [about peer review] is very difficult. If you think that [Geophysical Research Letters editor] Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted.

"They say that this journal or that one, because it dared publish peer-reviewed work that did not agree with the CRU consensus should be banished from the fold, and that its editors should resign or be booted, and that everybody should agree not to cite papers from those journals, and so on.

"In other words, use muscle and not mind if you don’t like the results. Get rid of the editor and put an agreeable apparatchik in his place."

The best thing about the release of those emails is that the writers will now suffer a similiar punishment. Those authors will never be able to serve on a public panel or face a press conference without the fear that somebody will sneak through security to confront them with a question on their lack of ethics, and objectivity.

This is sad stuff. Without a basic grip on the honesty of the data that they interpret the whole "Science is a special method that advances mankind's knowledge" mantra" used to end discussion by rubes is Gone Forever. Any person that holds to a belief in science as a sacred method holding itself apart from the politcs of deception needs to rise up and publically condemn these Climate Crooks. Neutrality in the face of this Mafia Take Over of Science is unacceptible. We need a Million Scientists March on Washington to prove that they are not just a million more Mary Landrieus rolling in stolen doughs.

Yes. It is one of several version of anti-Christianity. In this one, man is all powerful and can destroy what God created and gave to us. We can of course, also save the planet because we are all there is.

Curiously, there are other versions of anti-Christianity in which man is nothing but a virus!

Having got out of the academic research business immediately after receiving my doctorate, my experience with the writing and submission of scientific papers is limited. I have served as peer reviewer exactly once. My name appears on a couple of papers that I didn't write (and didn't ask to have my name attached to). I chose not to put in the work to finish or to submit the papers that were based on my thesis research.

That's a long caveat for this observation: Scientists and engineers are subject to human nature just like everybody else. Because "objectivity" and "adherence to the data" are explicit values of our profession, I think the human tendency to let our feelings about people influence our beliefs about their competence, or to ignore data we don't like, are probably mitigated relative to many other professions. (Which is why "Show me the data" is a demand that will always have teeth.) But those tendencies don't go away, and they never quite let go their sway over people.

What a dangerous time to live in. What is certain when all facts are only propaganda of the day. If 60 US Senators can be paid off to declare CO2 is pollution...then we are no longer a free people with property rights. Now why would a back woods beauty queen like Sarah Palin be important? Beacause she is willing to fight back when everbody else just wants their cut of the loot. That's why.

It remains remarkable to recall the eager alacrity with which the Mann "hockey stick" was grasped without challenge or normal skepticism by those longing to establish their theories as unassailable fact. Such fawning acceptance was, to say the least ... unusual ... amongst serious scientists.

The most dispassionate analysis was submitted to the US House of Representatives in 2006 by Edward Wegman, chairman of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences committee on theoretical and applied statistics. It runs to 90 pages and should be generally comprehensible to anyone who actually paid attention in the occasional undergrad-level science class.

Quoting from the report:

Overall, our committee believes that Mann’s assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis.

Where we have commonality, I believe our report and the NRC panel essentially agree. …We believe that our discussion together with the discussion from the NRC report should take the “centering’ issue off the table. [Mann's] decentered methodology is simply incorrect mathematics … I am baffled by the claim that the incorrect method doesn’t matter because the answer is correct anyway.

This is a very good example of the left's opposition to free speech, of which they are so often an enemy. They are so sure they are right and that other people are wrong that to them it is morally correct to suprress the speech, communication, and opinions of others. It is anti-democratic and an instance of the left's ties to a Marxist perspective. For Marx, free speech simply meant letting the wrong people control public opion and this is how many leftists feel about free speech also. It is one of the odd links that often appears between liberalism, Marxism, and fascism.

The left is extremely intolerant of other people's beliefs, perceptions, and opinions. This is why Michele Goldberg wanted to get off the debate with Althouse. No respect for what others think.

In the case of these scientists, their suppression of the speech of others is actual scientific fraud and malfeasance. They really should be professionally reprimanded and lose any position where they can influnce what gets into a journal or report or who gets hired or appointed. The leader of this censorship squad should lose his directorship, at least. Perhaps he should lose his faculty position.

My understanding is that the e-mails, though very interesting for many reasons, are just the tip of the (rapidly expanding) iceberg. What is now public is the raw data that these guys were working so hard to hide. Once scientists get a chance to analyze that data, we'll get a much better look at the issue.

I think it's pretty important to understand exactly what has just happened. Nothing in this dump, so far, "disproves" AGW. What can be safely discarded, forever, is that at this point the "science is settled." That was always nonsense and now that reality has to be faced. Of course, once it is, we can let actual "science" settle the AGW debate. In short, we can finally have have what the believers claimed to have wanted. Good times.

What's amazing to me is that these moron scientists (educated at the best shools, dontcha know) who wrote these emails really believe they can keep this shit quiet.

I don't know if you happened to see this, over at the exhaustive "real time" analysis of said files being conducted over at Watt's Up With That... but: one of the happy little Junior Goracles in question was actually using his first name as his computer "screen name"... and his last name as his friggin' password! ;)

I doubt if anything will come of these revelations. Man-caused global warming is such a convenient stick with which to beat modern civilization and in particular the US that I don't think it really matters to our "betters" in the international community and the media whether it has any basis in fact or objective observation.

I'm pretty sure we will hear very little about this other than on "Faux News" and wishy-washy apologetics from the NYT and other mainstream outlets - the "preponderance of the evidence" still suggests that evil conservative SUV drivers (with too many children!) are still destroying Mother Gaia, in spite of any evidence to the contrary.

Well that settles it! A fiasco behind how reports were handled conclusively proves that CO2 doesn't retain heat and won't affect climate! I'm convinced of the validity of the hard-won faith that the denialists maintained all along! No brow-beating and ignoring of data was ever, ever performed in the public debate, least of all here on that muckraking purveyor of truth, Althouse! They are a true inspiration to us all and open the way to something less corruptible than science: Blind faith in the proposition that data is meaningless.

It's a bit terrifying to think that the rampant narcissistic asshattery of these clowns still threatens to cripple the world economy (well beyond its current dysfunction) and radically increase human misery for generations.

LAUNCELOT: Nay, indeed, if you had your eyes, you might fail of the knowing me: it is a wise father that knows his own child. Well, old man, I will tell you news of your son: give me your blessing: truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long; a man's son may, but at the length truth will out.

It's a bit terrifying to think that the rampant narcissistic asshattery of these clowns still threatens to cripple the world economy...

More blind faith that economic growth depends on maintaining carbon monopolies and inefficient use of energy rather than developing alternative energy resources. And unlike AGW, it has the added benefit of being counter-intuitive and illogical as well.

Lucid wrote: "The left is extremely intolerant of other people's beliefs, perceptions, and opinions."

Right. I have to laugh when I hear the Left's unrelenting pissing and moaning about the McCarthy period, as if they care about intellectual freedom. The Left has amply demonstrated that its only objection to McCarthyism is that it was directed at THEM. That was the outrage: "How dare they do to us what we intend to do to them!!"

As far as the Left is concerned, witch hunts are great as long as it's in charge of which witches are being hunted. How many people actually lost their jobs due to communist affiliation during the Red Scare compared to how many have lost their jobs/not been hired in the last 30 years due to failure to be politically correct?

This is analogous to the revelation of Catholic priest pedophilia. We should not let this get swept under the rug or allow these "scientists" to be "reassigned to new parishes". They need to lose their jobs and reputations.

This is cult behavior, like we find in some religions and even corporate environments. There are emotional incentives for playing along and towing the line, and emotional abuses for those who don't.

It's exactly what happened in the sweat lodge incident a while back.

We, as a society, need to find a way to educate ourselves to see this dynamic in our own lives before it takes root. Where to start, I don't know, as it seems to be a built in herd mentality defense mechanism, easily abused by intent or accident as the case may be.

I had not realized that the hockey stick thing was already discredited. Funny, I have friend still citing that.

Expat,

The hockey stick was discredited by Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit. In recreating Mann's work, he discovered that feeding random data into Mann's computer code resulted in hockey sticks, every single time.

McIntyre's study is available on his website, but you may have difficulty accessing it since his web server has been overloaded since Thursday.

McIntyre is a mathematician and the goal of his website is to determine if the work of climate scientists can withstand rigorous mathematical and statistical analysis. The overwhelming answer for years now has been a resounding no.

In fact, in one case an AGW study failed standard statistical analysis, so the paper's author created a new method for establishing statistical validity, then used it to prove the statistical validity of the study that failed the standard method.

Circular enough for you?

Naturally, McIntyre is hated by AGW scientists for exposing such fraudulent work.

I've said it before in other forums and I'll say it here: Man-made global warming will go down in history as one of the greatest scientific frauds of human history, right up there with the flat Earthers.

So where the fuck is your rational or cogent responses on anything Miller?

Hums jeopardy tune.

I mean, on this thread you're apparently content to let others do your arguing for you. So I guess that effectively demolishes your claim to expertise on anything remotely resembling a rational or cogent response.

A lot of the emails refer to the Climate Audit web site. Steve McIntyre is a very careful guy and chose an appropriate name for his site. His goal was to reproduce the results from proxy temperature studies - to audit them. That should be tame stuff but many of the researchers will not release the data and/or computer code that their results were based on. We are supposed to trust them.

McIntyre and others have found all kinds of errors (math/statistical errors, mislabeling of data etc.) in the other scientists work. It is really quite amazing. Now we see that some of the top researchers in the world are trying to spike any dissenting research and trash scientists that disagree. In many fields this would not matter - eventually the data would win out. Now however a large group ("Big Climate"? ) wants more control over just about everything and they are in control of the science funding, international organizations, and many government research organizations. It’s a pretty sad.

Ritmo said: "Wish I had the wishy-washy lack of testicular fortitude that impels you to say that AGW might be real while refusing to take it seriously."

I think the key word here is "might" (as in "might be real"). Meanwhile, although it might also NOT be real, we should enact laws to cripple our economy and impoverish the populace, just in case it IS real. To you and your ilk, this is justified, since even if it is not real, it is a useful tool for condemning the typical abhorrent Christian conservative who has more than one child and lives in a large house in the suburbs.

Please explain why we should take these ominous "facts" seriously when it is obvious they have been manipulated for overtly political reasons, at least in this venue.

Expressing a desire to pop an academic opponent in the nose -- don't we all occasionally wish violence on people who annoy us?

"rid me of this turbulent priest" -- I think people almost always refer to this ironically. Are there people who actually allude to this with perfect seriousness?

What seems to me most disturbing about the emails -- and most discrediting of the people on the chain -- is how desperate they clearly are to prevent their data getting out, to the point that they're coordinating deletion of their emails. I'm biased, of course, by the fact that I automatically look at these kinds of shady email-deletion schemes through the lens of American discovery, where it's spoliation of evidence, and can lead to heavy sanctions in litigation, as well as criminal penalties. So it looks really, really bad to me. On the other hand, I don't know that there's similar penalties for intentionally destroying evidence when it's a matter of a FOIA request. Either way, I would think their university should launch an internal investigation, and consider suspending some of the people involved in directing the email deletion.

The second question I have is -- why would hackers go for this? It sounds like it was a pack of Russians, but why would Russians bother to pull this specific data out? Are they just irritated at the smug holier-than-thou tone that Western powers adopt when lecturing Russians about global warming? But why would they even care what outsiders say? It just seems like a bizarre way for this email to come out.

Now I don't know much (i.e., anything at all) about the actual science here, so I won't be so foolish as to pretend to know whether or not AGW is factually true.

But what worries me is how partisan and ideological the debate is (forgive the oft-abused buzzwords). Each side has its answers at the ready, and heaps scorn on those so ignorant as to believe otherwise. That's the environment in which things such as those hinted at in these emails take place.

All the defenses of these emails that I've seen have taken two primary lines: (1) those emails were stolen! That's wrong! Probably tampered with by those wicked skeptics, too! Inadmissible evidence! ; (2) defenses of the "behind closed doors, they may be less diplomatic, but that doesn't invalidate their real, factual, scientific conclusions--all you skeptics are doing is obfuscating" sort.

But the problem with those two defenses is that they ignore the what's really worrisome about these emails. Whichever camp you happen to be in on the question of global warming, you must agree that these are capital-b-capital-t Bad Things:

(1) The deliberate suppression of data or refusal to make it available.(2) The attempts to "redefine peer-review literature."

I can certainly understand legitimate frustration with skeptics on the part of these scientists, and the manifestation of that frustration in such unpleasantnesses as wishing to "beat the crap" out of their opponents, but that's incidental.

The two problems listed above are real problems because they work counter to what is essential to true scientific progress. These do call into question their conclusions--which is not to say that those conclusions are immediately and unequivocally wrong (to make such a claim is polemical and doesn't help anything), but they are certainly now under legitimate suspicion, and must be cleared of it.

In many fields this would not matter - eventually the data would win out.

It wouldn't matter in this one either -- there's huge numbers of scientists involved in climate research, beyond the researchers on these emails, and the vast majority of them are, I'm sure, perfectly legitimate scientists, willing to look at and accept data.

What makes this situation problematic, is that the researchers on this chain appear to have gone to considerable trouble to obfuscate their data, and even to destroy it. Whichever way the data would point, the data can't win out if it's been destroyed, to avoid challenge and scrutiny.

I think the key word here is "might" (as in "might be real"). Meanwhile, although it might also NOT be real, we should enact laws to cripple our economy and impoverish the populace, just in case it IS real. To you and your ilk, this is justified, since even if it is not real, it is a useful tool for condemning the typical abhorrent Christian conservative who has more than one child and lives in a large house in the suburbs.

And even nicer thing about conceding uncertainty about science while maintaining absolute certainty about how something will "cripple our economy and impoverish the populace". There is no reason to believe this right-wing article of faith that maintains not developing alternative energy and not pushing for more efficient use will do either. The rational conclusion actually counters that fiction.

Please explain why we should take these ominous "facts" seriously when it is obvious they have been manipulated for overtly political reasons, at least in this venue.

I could ask the same of you and everyone else in this venue.

Raw data is still out there, for anyone interested. But they aren't. See Gabe Hanna for details.

My pet theory is that the entire AGW fiasco was planned and set in motion by Soviet era apparachiks. Now that the walls have fallen and the field has changed, those some apparachiks are horrified at the easy success of their plans. Their teachers are in our schools, their students in our whitehouse. The whole thing is working just a little too damn well and some of them aren't as eager to return to the Soviet era as they once were.

It has become political because scientists stopped being scientists and instead became advocates.

AGW scientists for decades have refused to archive and publicly post their data, computer codes, and other information used in their studies, even though most of it was paid for by tax dollars and the terms of their grants required such disclosure.

These scientists have done everything possible to deny FOIA requests. In one instance, an AGW scientist refused to give data to McIntyre stating "you just want to prove me wrong."

Let that last line sink in for a moment and realize these people, who want us to spend trillions of dollars to solve AGW, are supposed to be scientists pursuing facts, regardless of where they lead.

We need to watch how this unfolds in the UK. The Brits are much more aware of Green regulations and taxes as they have begun to have an adverse impact on their lives. Gordon Brown and the Labor party have tied themselves to these hair- shirt environmental rules. The CRU scandal has to potential to be politically explosive over there. Senator Boxer, you might want to pay attention.

I'm no scientist, but if I were one, I would think I have a hypothesis to test; I collect data; I analyze the data and then use it to determine if my hypothesis is right or wrong.

I might be a bit hazy as to what actually happens here, but if I were a scientist and I discovered data that utterly disproved my hypothesis, I would be no scientist to attempt to hide or destroy the data.

What's going on here in CRU and "ClimateGate" is an attempt to destroy evidence and shut down the discussion.

I'm no scientist, but if I were one, I would think I have a hypothesis to test; I collect data; I analyze the data and then use it to determine if my hypothesis is right or wrong.

I might be a bit hazy as to what actually happens here, but if I were a scientist and I discovered data that utterly disproved my hypothesis, I would be no scientist to attempt to hide or destroy the data.

What's going on here in CRU and "ClimateGate" is an attempt to destroy evidence and shut down the discussion.

Are the quality of these supposedly damning reports even debateable? Are there any facts revealed within them that exculpate the obviously political machinations of the skeptics in the public debate? Do such questions not matter?

What could possibly motivate someone to defend this crap. Doing so clearly defines you as unserious at best. It proves that you are guided by the agenda, not the truth.

Ahhh... .therein you reveal how unserious guys like Miller and his ilk really are. Nowhere did I defend any tactics described in the article. FInd one place where I did such a thing. What I am asking for is an evaluation on the extent to which contradictory reports would affect the conclusions. I know that doesn't matter to you, because you guys are only concerned about the public debate. But it matters to anyone who actually cares about the conclusions, rather than just the "effects" of the conclusions. Process matters, of course. But attention is focused on this specific issue. So mull that one over for a bit and get back to me.

...how long do you think is reasonable to pursue facts, until you would manage to take a position on where it's leading?

I don't want government-funded scientists becoming political activists. Just tell us how things work and let the rest of society decide what, if anything, to do with that knowledge.

Once a scientist becomes a political advocate, their ability to objectively examine the facts disappears.

And if those scientists spend a significant portion of their career doing everything humanly possible to keep their work from being independently examined and verified, then we shouldn't listen to them at all.

No. There you don't have it. Science is always indeterminate, fool. That's precisely the point. We're talking about the point at which it's determinate enough to act upon, which is a social question. Not a scientific question. Science will never tell if something is known well enough to do anything about what it's shown at that point or not.

To not get this is to reveal that one doesn't even get what science is!

"And if those scientists spend a significant portion of their career doing everything humanly possible to keep their work from being independently examined and verified, then we shouldn't listen to them at all. " [emphasis added]

The (thankfully) rare dishonest ones, on the other hand, reflexively bluster, obfuscate and dissemble. While their ready apologia choir, in the meantime, simply toddle about the room and underfoot, playing with their stick ponies.

"And if those scientists spend a significant portion of their career doing everything humanly possible to keep their work from being independently examined and verified, then we shouldn't listen to them at all."

I agree with that. But I find it harder to agree with the fantasy that no scientist will have any political or social convictions regarding anything that touches their work. I'm not sure we should have asked the same of Pasteur (motivated to fight disease) or Einstein (motivated to end Germany's quest to rule the world). But you go ahead and pretend that scientists are robots or that science can reveal certainty any more than anything else. A better approximation of certainty is all that you will get. And that's a fact, Jack.

Transparency is the only solution to this problem of biased and fraudulent science. These scientists are almost all funded by one national government or another. There ought to be regulations in effect that require that in exchange for taxpayer funds, these scientists have to make every data-set, document, and email public. Just a little bit of transparency has rocked CRU to the core. It would be fabulous if every climate scientist proclaiming the urgent need for billions of dollars to save the planet were exposed to the same level of scrutiny. If so, we might actually figure out what is really happening with the climate. This scandal has shown that interested climate scientists can't be trusted. It would be a folly to agree to some binding international agreement in Copenhagen in light of such fraud. Lets shed some light on this and come back to it in a few years.

Jeremy, I mean Ritmo, it's nice that you concede "uncertainty", in light of this transparently obvious politically-motivated scientific fraud. When I say that legislation intended to combat AGW will "cripple our economy" I am asserting that added expense for no tangible gain will increase the cost of any good or service that involves the use of energy in its production. Can you deny that? Perhaps you believe that all of these super-wealthy manufacurers and power plants will just absorb the expense without passing it on to the consumer. The economy is already in trouble without rising prices for energy and every conceivable consumer good. Cap and trade will hinder economic growth, and add to inflation, in spite of all of the pie-in-the-sky "green jobs" that might be created.

If "raw data" is out there give it to us and hope that the intregity of its source will not be compromised in the future by hackers.

I do, however, agree with the comment that this revelation does not disprove the existence of AGW. It does, however, shatter the idea (embraced by Obama, no less) that there is a consensus on the science.

This also should (but may not) end all attempts to radically tax and restructure the national and world economy because of the predictions made by the climate models these "scientists" have devised.

Science will never tell if something is known well enough to do anything about what it's shown at that point or not.

Not true in all scientific fields.

Double-blind, multi-phase medical research studies provide reliable data to determine whether a drug works or doesn't work, or whether it works well enough to justify further development. Michael Crichton recommended taking a similar approach to environmental studies.

The problem with AGW is that the base data, the temp records, are atrociously inaccurate. What is the margin of error on a mercury thermometer with a hand-painted temp scale?

What is the margin of error if the thermometer is 6 inches above eye level of the person reading it? What is the margin of error if the thermometer is 6 inches below eye level of the person reading it?

What is the margin of error if the thermometer is housed inside a shelter covered in white paint? Bare wood? Whitewash?

You can find answers on WUWT, Climate Audit & Surfacestations.org.

SurfaceStations.org has audited modern weather stations and found that most have margins of error greater than the warming trend of the last 100 years. In other words, the noise is bigger than the signal, which means the data is junk.

When examined objectively, AGW can't get past instrumental margin of error, and the extreme lengths scientists take to massage the data and try to make it useful undermines the temp record's credibility even more.

Since when is fighting disease political? And Einstein had to be cajoled into supporting the bomb project.

Einstein may have wrote the letter to FDR after prompting by other scientists, but not by politicians. And why the discrete separation between political and social? Pasteur was ridiculed by those wise "common folk" for advocating killing the germs in your milk before you drank them. "How disgusting!" they reacted. "Dead microbes are surely worse for you than live ones." But back then such people, as widespread as they were, didn't have a GOP to represent them. But they would have if Cato and the rest of the think tanks had their way. Just look at how those guys protect businesses that treat consumers the way manufacturers of unsafe milk would.

I don't know who Szilard is but Pauling's vitamin C lunacy doesn't detract one iota from his other accomplishments. You might say that his other accomplishments didn't have to do with vitamin C but isn't that splitting hairs at this point? I thought all you guys cared about was airing what amounts to dissent by virtue of an unpopular opinion?

I had no idea Pasteur and Einstein falsified their data. The things I learn on this site. So both started with their conclusions and worked their labs backwards from there to prove them? Which they would have had to have done to be relevant to this topic.

Dogwood apparently never heard of Avandia, Rezulin, Trovan, thalidomide, etc., etc., ad infinitum ad nauseam. I work in that field and daily we hear about some effect that wasn't revealed in clinical trials.

But those are toxicity effect so you want to go on about efficacy alone?

Fine.

Tell me about the marketing push to get doctors to prescribe things for off-label uses and then we'll talk about whether sufficiently significant investment was put into developing the drug for its "intended use". Pfizer just settled for billions with the government for off-label marketing. And the state of knowledge in medicine changes all the time. Twenty years ago meds were developed just for being a blockbuster at the theoretical level, only for researchers to find that clinical improvements were slight. But they're working on that.

Your problem is that you don't have any controlled trials simulating the entire earth and all the variables that go into it. Get back to me once you admit that you're submitting the entire planet to an experiment and then we will talk comparisons to pharma, ok? Confusing patients with guinea pigs involves all sorts of consent and ethical issues. So this only brings your debate back into the issue of "public concerns" rather than the science behind it. Which is what is just as strong a motivator in you, Dogwood.

At least I admit my agenda, which is to do whatever I can to make sure the earth over-heats and kills us all. That's what I'm all about. It's simple good versus evil. These scientist are heroes, but their drive for wealth and fame is no match for the evil that fuels us skeptics.

@Ritmo: Re Pauling: I was referrng to his successful efforts to end atmospheric testing of H-bomb weapons, which contaminated the atmosphere with tritium. The Vitamin C stuff came later. So sad that that became his legacy, after such a brilliant and influential career, but that's another story.

Glenn Reynolds linked to this, which provides a trenchant analysis from a scientific perspective.

The top of Martin's second page is to me the most damning. Dr. Phil Jones wrote that he would deliberately delete his data files rather than respond to an FOIA from one of his opponents. The FOIA was filed and the data was described as "inadvertantly deleted."

AGW is the 21st century's first scientific hoax. It won't be the last.

The debate with Hannah revealed how few of you were interested in looking at data in the first place, not its quality. (At least for most of you). So stop with the self-righteous bullshit about how you only care about the quality of the data. You didn't then, you don't now (with a rare exception here or there).

@Ritmo, you don't know who Leo Szilard is? Did you sleep through your physics classes?

Linus Pauling had a number of major scientific blunders to his "credit." Most famously, he proposed a structure for DNA (pre Watson and Crick) that was not an acid. Since the "A" in DNA is "acid" then this was just a bit off the mark.

Who is the mysterious "AC245"? A sock-puppet for a whistleblower on AGW? Did you reveal any, what's the term, evidence for malfeasance at the time? If you had it, why did the Post break this before you did? Questions, questions. We are talking about evidence and the nature of evidence in the first place, aren't we? At least that's what I thought.

I didn't sleep through physics classes. I did quite well in them, actually. And I didn't confuse them with history of science classes. We didn't focus on who found out what after high school. We actually, you know, did experiments. It was very instructive in seeing how science works.

Einstein said something about imagination being more important than knowledge. Kudos to Pauling for being as brilliant and daring as he was and coming up with models (which is a crucial part of what scientists do) before Rosalind Franklin could show which one was correct.

You weren't sleeping through my lecture on knowledge being perpetually indeterminate - and hence its continuation, Big Mike. Were you?

I pointed out in the previous thread that the NASA GISS temperature data is not raw. It is manipulated before it is published.

Since you claimed on this thread that (your alter ego?) Gabriel Hanna was the guy to listen to about raw data, it seemed appropriate to point out Gabriel Hanna's ignorance about what is raw data and what isn't.

I'm not any sort of AGW whistleblower, and unlike you I do not comment here under multiple names.

Ritmo said: "Just look at how those guys protect businesses that treat consumers the way manufacturers of unsafe milk would."

I'm pretty sure that most proponents of raw, unpasteurized milk in the modern age have a "D" by their names. That example was a FAIL on your part.

One thing I didn't fail was reading, Omaha1.

I seem to discern that "unsafe" and "unpasteurized" are actually, get this, TWO DIFFERENT WORDS.

If someone wants to argue that unpasteurized is unsafe, that's fine. This is not about consumer choice. It's a debate about how industries want carte blanche to repeal caveat emptor. Do you know how relaxed labeling restrictions have become on household cleaning products, chemicals, etc.? Do you care? Do you discern a difference between industry arguing what's safe enough for a consumer and a consumer deciding, on their own, what risks they'd like to take?

I'm am not switching back and forth, over and over again, between different names, idiot. I am also not Gabe Hannah. If you fancy yourself such a defender of high evidentiary standards then you might want to keep your assertions to those which don't reveal you to be paranoid. And to those which you can defend. If you didn't have evidence for what you took up last time, then that makes you lucky, not right. Guesses are no way forward on this. If so, we could just do fifty-fifty coin tosses.

Ritmo said "Your problem is that you don't have any controlled trials simulating the entire earth and all the variables that go into it."

Neither do you, and the data behind the models that you support is tainted by the eternal quest for more money and political influence. "Get back to me once you admit that you're submitting the entire planet to an experiment and then we will talk." Yes, let's.

It is obvious to me why AGW is such an attractive cause for political leaders around the world. It is an excuse for them to further control every aspect of our daily lives, thus increasing their power.

Probably a good thing that the the false veneer of "scientific community nobility, only interested in the truth" was ripped off.Science can be highly politicized. Lysenkoism is the most widely known..but there have been plenty of other vicious scientist-on-scientist fights in the past. Pasteur vs. scientists and doctors of past conventional thinking. Scientists that waged all-out war against Darwin. The nuclear physicists of the 20s through the 50s were politicized and personal politics drove many into advocacy or rejection of course of actions based on the science.There was the great Salk vs. Sabin vaccine controversy between scientists.And the last vicious fight, still ongoing, is the scientific camps that are pro-vaccine or anti-vaccine.

================What the hackers have done in this case is not the ego-driven vandalism they are so rightly condemned for in so many of their hacks.....but true whistle-blowing.What is exposed is yet another movement, like communism, that is so convinced of their correctness - that they have taken the next step to think debate is over and any that stand in the way of "the correct path" can ethically be attacked and hopefully destroyed.

I asked outright in my first comment to you if you also commented under the name Gabriel Hanna. You declined to answer that question in your response - not my fault.

I also wasn't "lucky" in the previous thread. I knew for a fact that the published GISS data was manipulated, and not raw. The links demonstrating how I knew that are still there in that previous thread; feel free to cure your ignorance on the topic by following them.

Ritmo said "Your problem is that you don't have any controlled trials simulating the entire earth and all the variables that go into it."

Neither do you,

Ahhh.... but what I do have is knowledge of basic facts regarding the heat-retention properties of various substances, Occam's razor and a claim to conservative approaches to subjecting the public to experiments.

and the data behind the models that you support is tainted by the eternal quest for more money and political influence. "Get back to me once you admit that you're submitting the entire planet to an experiment and then we will talk." Yes, let's.

Dogwood and I and AC234234234 can talk about that. You, OTOH, do not understand how experiments work and you are also in the dark apparently about something so basis as the amount of money Exxon, Cato and friends have to influence their paid-for scientists. Either that or you are dishonest or lack a fair standard for what constitutes a conflict of interest.

Thanks once again for another completely unserious diversion. It doesn't help the others here who may actually be interested in the quality of data and the authority of science. But I'll let them take that up with you.

Just to resolve any confusion, I am not Gabriel Hannah. Gabriel Hannah has a link from his profile to a weblog that would seem to reveal him quite interested in physics, honest inquiry and education. I have some basic, college-level knowledge of physics, am interested in honest inquiry, and don't mind participating in helping to educate people on something they are genuinely curious about. But I am not Gabriel Hannah.

Having read a fair amount of the material that was released it seems there was unethical behavior going on at every level.

1: Tax fraud was alluded to.2: E-mails were being destroyed in response to FOI act requests.3: A coterie of climate "scientists" were actively plotting how to discredit their rivals instead of their rival's theories.4: Data was being destroyed.5: Data was being falsified.6: Alternate theories were never considered and legitimate questions were ducked and never answered.7: Data and methods were being hidden so that work could not be replicated. Indeed the skeptics had to reverse engineer much of what was going on to figure out where the frauds were being committed.8: None of the conspirators felt the least bit of anxiety about the politicization of their work and they were eager advocates for certain policies wholly outside of their purview.9: Admissions were made that their theory was making false predictions and that they could not explain what was happening with the climate.

In short it was everything that a dispassionate observer would have expected. And this is just what I could find upon cursory examination.

It reminded me more of an episode of the Sopranos than of the writings of a bunch of sober minded scientists. These men were clearly not very bright and indeed acted as fools much of the time but they had latched onto a good source of fraudulent income and weren't about to give up the gravy train.

It will be interesting to see if we ever find out who set this information free in the wild. I have half a mind that it was the Russians who have no need for this sort of disinformation campaign now that they are energy exporters on a large scale. But it is more likely that it was someone inside who developed a conscience or some hacker getting his kicks taking a few self-righteous busybodies down a peg. Whoever it was is owed an immense amount of gratitude whatever their motivations.

Its fun to see an AGW cultist like Ritmo try so vainly to ignore the fact that these "scientists" have blatantly and deliberately ignored every fact that directly questions the theory of AGW.

Ritmo, Global warming seems to have warmed you up a little too personally. Keep up faith in the cult, because you are not a scientist and you dont have an iota of knowledge about the climate of a planet that has gone thru drastic changes in weather over a period of millions of years.

For all the "data" that is out there you would nt know a thing about how to interpret them. Or have the intellectual honesty or the humility to understand/admit that the theory of AGW is based on climate models which are imprecise to say the least...

Keep the faith, Ritmo. More "believers" like you are needed to keep the cult alive.

2: E-mails were being destroyed in response to FOI act requests.4: Data was being destroyed.5: Data was being falsified.7: Data and methods were being hidden so that work could not be replicated. Indeed the skeptics had to reverse engineer much of what was going on to figure out where the frauds were being committed.

Ah, yes. The Return of the Actual Subject at Hand, in other words.

All four points will be duly (if ineptly) dodged once again, however, to the accompanying clamor of make-believe hoofbeats on kitchen linoleum. "Giddyup, Lightning! WHEEEEEEEEE -- !!!" ;)

Those of you who respond to MUL/BSR/RSB/Sockpuppet -- How's that working for you?

It depends what they want to get out of it, Miller. I fully acknowledge that I am not here to rubber-stamp anyone's predetermined conclusions (as you claim the scientists in question did), but to debate topics with evidence and reason. Of course, that sort of an endeavor is foreign to such a knucklehead as yourself.

Responding to BSR/RSB/MUL/Sockpuppet in hopes that just once he will pay attention to the data -- how often has that actually happened? Like never?

You are either one of the dumbest or most willfully ignorant people I've encountered here, Miller. And that's saying a lot.

There is NO data that's been presented! We have an allegation of a directed, concerted effort at suppressing data... and possibly intimidation. That's serious. But until we know what the hell that data consisted of, we won't know how it affects any scientific debate, if at all.

Again, all you are concerned about is the public debate. This affects that, sure. But stop pretending that you understand (or care about) science. You don't.

miller - I guess it depends on the goal in posting responses. There's no point in trying to change his closed mind, obviously.

But it was worthwhile (to me, at least) to document again the previous known examples of data manipulation by the AGW "scientists", and to highlight the basic ignorance of the true believers making claims about "raw data".

The tiresome Ritmo said: "I seem to discern that "unsafe" and "unpasteurized" are actually, get this, TWO DIFFERENT WORDS."

The consumption of unpasteurized milk is unnecessarily risky, by any standard. Certainly there are many well-intentioned parents who believe that modern technology is somehow wrong or misguided, and have given their children raw milk without ill effects. This does not refute the fact that pathogens which would be killed by pasteurization may be ingested by the consumers of raw milk. I do not understand your distinction of "unsafe" and "unpasteurized" unless of course there is some guarantee of an absence of dangerous organisms in raw milk, which of course cannot exist.

Ritmo also said,"If someone wants to argue that unpasteurized is unsafe, that's fine. This is not about consumer choice. It's a debate about how industries want carte blanche to repeal caveat emptor. Do you know how relaxed labeling restrictions have become on household cleaning products, chemicals, etc.? Do you care? Do you discern a difference between industry arguing what's safe enough for a consumer and a consumer deciding, on their own, what risks they'd like to take?"

I'm sure that you will be happy to provide some examples of relaxed labeling restrictions of household cleaning products & chemicals, and I acknowledge that there is a significant difference between them and milk, since milk is intended for human consumption, and household chemicals are not.

I'm sorry, but I have no idea how the exposure of fraudulent global warming data, the labeling of household cleaning products, and the pasteurization of milk are related, so I must accuse "Ritmo" of changing the subject for no good reason whatsoever.

Ritmo also said, "Dogwood and I and AC234234234 can talk about that. You, OTOH, do not understand how experiments work and you are also in the dark apparently about something so basis as the amount of money Exxon, Cato and friends have to influence their paid-for scientists. Either that or you are dishonest or lack a fair standard for what constitutes a conflict of interest."

I guess Ritmo is claiming that the proponents of AGW have no interest in the financial or academic benefits of their global warming "research" which confirms the universal prejudice against American consumerism.

"Thanks once again for another completely unserious diversion. It doesn't help the others here who may actually be interested in the quality of data and the authority of science. But I'll let them take that up with you."

Please, enlighten me as to how this transparently unscientific fraud advances the international cause of combating global warming. When you cite the "quality of data" and the "authority of science" in this case, I just shake my head in wonder at your obstinate blindness.

The "Enron Accounting" scam was based on making sure that independent auditors never got to see the real books. The con job didn't require that everyone at Enron be involved in (or aware of) the deceptions. The majority of Enron employees, stock analysts, and financial advisors who cheerled the whole scheme were ignorant that it was a scam and innocent of any intentional deception.

The fraud only required a few crooked gatekeepers to cook the books, put on a happy face to the public, shout down anyone who questioned their business practices, and deter honest critics from getting a close look at the real numbers.

These emails indicate that the case for AGW is based on "Enron Science."

I don't mean to dismiss your attempts at reasoning or to minimize the repeated and necessary re-assertions that bad data cannot produce good (read: valid) outcomes.

I am just reminding the cheerfully optimistic that responding to RSB/BSR/MUL/Sockpuppet doesn't do much good, if you define "good" as "leading to a change in determination or decision based upon superior, factual data."

I'm not sure what type of pharmacopoeia drives RSB/BSR/MUL/Sockpuppet.

It is not worth debating someone who produces paragraph upon paragraph in the hopes of convincing me that I am not fit to participate in answering a scientific question when they think that the exposure to household chemicals obviates safety concerns by virtue of the fact that people aren't supposed to drink them. After all, who drinks asbestos!

Miller might want to look up the word "pharmacopoeia". Of course, he won't. He'll just bang on his drum and argue for intimidating, harassing and suppressing anyone here who disagrees with him. Much like the scientists whom he claims makes his case.

Like health care reform and Senator Mary Landrieu, AGW science is all (and only) about money and power.

There are a lot of similarities between the AGW movement and the Healthcare Reform Now!! movement--the critical one being massive government control. Specifically, in the hands of a bunch of incompetent, greedy, and power-hungry politicians.

Fraud is fraud. I know that in an age of Hope and Change fraud might be minimized, but really, if the data is wrong, the conclusions are wrong. (The conclusions might accidentally be "right," of course, but they aren't derived from the data & hence aren't valid.)

Ritmo...Good day to you. Let me add another point of view to the learned discussion of science whoring itself out for geo-politics. My observation over 40 years as an attorney trying to get to truth among humans playing in the human drama has been the stark reactions to any fact inquiry among trained fact gatherers and reporters( Hereinafter called the "CPAs"), and survivors in the jungle of life( Hereinafter called "Everyday Folks"). Of course the CPAs report what is tested and carefully verified and let those results stand as the truthful answer. CPAs can include any trained reporter of measured observations, such as an Artillery Recon squad leader calling in fire upon the enemy in the Marines or the Airborne. He sure as hell better not make up reported data. Then you have the Everday Folks who refuse to answer an inquiry until you first tell them what their answer gets for them. Humans are instinctive liars. They have to have been trained out of that habit. Therefore we seek our truthful information from the trained CPAs and distain the information coming from Everyday Folks. The last 15 years we have seen a Craft amounting to a carefully constructed Mind Control Operation that is flooding us with Counterfeits of CPA type information. Like a sniper in deep cover for days awaiting a kill shot, todays enemies are dressed up in Science Clothes and speak in Science patois and science vocabulary while they slowy pull us in with fake data reports for a head shot. It just happens that no amount of your distain for Everyday Folks will any longer work to keeps the targets asleep in the kill zone of the Fake Scientist's pretense of Global Warming Doom, Doom, Doom.

Don't simplify a terribly complex personality disorder. It took liberals generations to get where they are, years and years of Chablis and Cabernet, reams of fiction and fantasy, acres and acres of cannabis - and one beautiful girl who just laughed in their face.

Which explains ugly wives and gay marriage, not to mention man-made global warming.

No matter how you explain these things is what fanatical believers these guys are. They honestly believe they are right. But rather than proving they were right, they just supressed anyone and any data that didn't fit the mold. It was a total corruption of the scientific process.

Good afternoon, TG. Your discourse on people entrusted to disseminate facts, information and knowledge is interesting and entertaining as always, but your conclusion confuses me. Of course, if one of these types can fabricate, so can these any one of these "Everyday Folks" whom you seem to claim have a uniform opinion on the issue at hand. After all, when you said that "(h)umans are instinctive liars," I'm assuming you didn't exclude the "Everyday Folks".

The way I see it, people here wouldn't see scientists as being in some position of authority (that they either trust or not, that is up to them. It's not my argument) that they have abused. It is egregious to manipulate data, especially when you are in a position to do a lot of work based off of interpreting it. As long as we are going to say that ignorance is no excuse for "instinctively lying" though, we will have to attach as much responsibility to the "Everyday Folks" for the discrepancies in their position as we will those evil scientists. And the Cato Institute. And Exxon Mobile. Seeing as how the latter two are in a position to do a lot of work based off of interpreting evidence and data.

Let's you and me be honest and accept that there's plenty of blame to go around. The politicization of science is not a one-way thing and it's not as if this institute was the first one to make fighting it an uphill battle.

Let's you and me be honest and accept that there's plenty of blame to go around. The politicization of science is not a one-way thing and it's not as if this institute was the first one to make fighting it an uphill battle.

"intimidating, harassing and suppressing anyone here who disagrees with him [Ritmo]"

Really? Are you being intimidated, harassed and suppressed by the comments of the uneducated, rightwing hillbillies here? It appears that the mighty Althouse has decided to just ignore you, in spite of her complete authority to do whatever she wants with regard to her comments section.

More likely you are just tired of trying to defend your indefensible positions. Bye bye then, perhaps we'll hear from you later when the media conjures up some politically acceptable and semi-plausible excuse for this blatant abuse of scientific authority in the advancement of a one-sided agenda.

Ritmo said, "Let's you and me be honest and accept that there's plenty of blame to go around. The politicization of science is not a one-way thing and it's not as if this institute was the first one to make fighting it an uphill battle."

Since you acknowledge this, I assume that you will be open to any other scientific findings that argue against the theory of anthropogenic global warming, and will be in favor of delaying legislation that impacts heavily upon the lifestyles and financial well-being of the American people.

What is most interesting to me is not the AGW issue--though I guess that is interesting in itself, just so over talked about, it's more boring than it used to be.

What is most interesting to me is how this exposes the fallacy of scientism that is so often promoted on sites like boing boing and elsewhere on the internet--and often used to attack the supposed inadequacy of religion or other philosophies.

It's an early 20th century vision of the heroic model of Science that could wipe away all human ills if people were just rigorous and thoughtful enough to follow the scientific method in all things.

Only, as we see here, even some of the most advanced scientists are still entirely fallible humans whose methodology is always, in some way or another, affected by other human drives--whether that be for success, recognition, peer approval, whatever.

I have a good Scientist friend who talks about how much politics and psychology is at the root of almost all the fields--she who is published in Science and Nature and works at a major research university is continually struck by the sheer, sad, often immature humanness of those who are called scientists--and immaturity that abuses the science out of ignorance or malicious selfishness.

Not all people are driven to such levels of deceit or utter falsehoods... but every person, whether scientist or not, is still a person with all that human mess that never gets quite as pure as some folks might wish were possible.

wv: tersesse. Okay! I will. Sheesh, even the word verification apparently is weary of my prolixity.

Perhaps the Idiots who have frightened our school children with Enviro Mullah Al Gore's movie will call a School Assembly and announce, "Never mind, it's all a Hoax, and the Polar Bears are safe and we are NOT all going to drown when the ice caps melt."

Since you acknowledge this, I assume that you will be open to any other scientific findings that argue against the theory of anthropogenic global warming, and will be in favor of delaying legislation that impacts heavily upon the lifestyles and financial well-being of the American people.

Nope. You're wrong there. You can get as fat and gluttonous as you want and I will still agree with Dogwood that until we get to 10% CO2 content in the atmosphere without any drastic changes, we have not proved that a heat-retaining compound has not been shown to affect climate. Of course, this standard might sound arbitrary to someone as innumerate, scientifically illiterate and historically ignorant as you, just as your raging need to drive as many specifically octane-fueled SUVs sounds arbitrary and strange to me. But I am not as well-versed in the idea of clamoring around the battle cry of "LIFESTYLE!" as a social defense of one's gluttony.

The hippies clamored around "lifestyle" as a defense for their values, though, so I guess you're kind of coming around. Really slowly. But the pomocons are coming around. Yesterday's tactics of the left have become the tactics of the hard-looney right.

Oh. And Ann Althouse almost never engages in the comments sections. You must be a newbie. Welcome!

I appreciate your becoming more and more oblique in your criticisms of me, el. It shows that you have less and less of a point to make.

But do get up to speed on that whole definition of "sock puppet". It would drastically improve your credibility and standing as trusted yet pseudonymous virtual commentator on all internets-based controversies.

I do like your new moniker, Ritzy Brassiere - I think that might stick!

So let me rephrase your comment: you are in favor of "science" as long as it supports your predetermined view of the universe. Gotcha.

Ritzy sez, "I will still agree with Dogwood that until we get to 10% CO2 content in the atmosphere without any drastic changes, we have not proved that a heat-retaining compound has not been shown to affect climate. "

We are still a long way off from 10% (currently around .038% per Wikipedia) and have not as yet "proved" anything - does this impact your hypothesis at all? Oh I forgot, you can't disprove a negative, consequently, we need immediate legislation to curb my gluttonous, SUV-driving ways.

Very interesting. Those guys who allegedly wrote the alleged e-mails are clearly not scientists, no matter what the signs on their office doors may say.

Fortunately, one doesn't need to have an office with one's name on it to do science. It's a methodology, not a cult. If you can figure out how to do it on the cheap, then you don't have to worry about pandering to Evil Oil Companies, the Trilateral Commission, NASA, or whoever else is splashing the cash around.

I have been measuring sea levels in the North Atlantic since long before it became a fad. I can state from my own observations that sea levels are NOT rising - they haven't moved to any noticeable degree since the mid-1960s (the start point for my data). From that unequivocal fact I can make some deductions. I deduce that since sea levels are not rising, the major glaciers are not melting at anything other than their usual historical rates. And from that I deduce that the time- and space-integrated global temperatures are not rising. In other words, "global warming" is a bust. And from that, I deduce that what carbon dioxide levels may be doing is simply of no consequence, at least so far as the climate is concerned. Q.E.D.

Now, my observations are hardly proof that nothing will ever happen in the future, so I will continue my measurement program no matter where the political chips may fall. But as of right now, all the "climate change" hooey is just that - hooey.

At no point did I simultaneously post under multiple identities. The name before changed to the name that exists now, just as if someone went to court and changed their name. Your confusion of this with a deliberate attempt to confuse people as to whether or not this is the same person is delusional - and perhaps suggestive of a thought disorder.

And only an ignorant asshole would use a term as meaningless as "neurotic personality disorder". But I'm not surprised Elle does that.

The fact that CO2 retains heat is not an ideological talking point. Nor is it an ideological talking point to urge caution in relying on it as the byproduct of a singular form of one's energy resources given that fact. You have not provided a single original thought and all arguments to the contrary rely on ideological talking points.

For instance, the irony of listening to someone from Omaha yammering on about how not doing enough to keep wind energy from penetrating the mix lest we experience a foreboding and imminent economic collapse is overwhelmingly ridiculous. No thinking person could come up with such a stance, only an ideologue.

I mean, the last thing I would want to do is to advocate messing with the massive oil production of such a heavily industrialized and windless state as Nebraska; that would hurt their economy. What with all those smokestacks and oil refineries, they'd be well on their way to becoming the next Saudi Arabia (another petro-state with declining living standards) were it not for all those evil libruls and... ta-da! Al Gore!

Such nonsense would be funny if it weren't so sadly stupid.

But Adam Smith never said anything about people being too stupid to recognize their own rational interests.

Man-made climate change is not really a religion, as some have claimed. It is a social pseudo-scientific myth. It has many things in common with Eugenics and Lysenkoism (mentioned earlier by Cedarford). Both of them had the support of the official scientific community of their societies. They were accepted and believed as obvious truth by all the ‘in’ people—‘in’ academia, ‘in’ government, ‘in’ media, ‘in’ culture, and so forth. Eugenics lost almost all credibility with the death of Hitler; Lysenkoism with the death of Stalin. Let us hope we do not have to fight and win a war with another totalitarian dictator to prevent the logical deadly consequences of the AGW myth.

There is nothing radical about maintaining that the burden of proof is on people who deny that heat-retaining CO2 will affect climate.

There is nothing radical about maintaining that the burden of proof is on people who wish to alter a natural system to prove that such an alteration will not affect the functioning of that system.

These are actually conservative principles.

Not religious. Conservative.

Right, the burden of proof is on the people who don't want to radically reorganize the world's economy. That's Edmund Burke all the way.

In case you're too myopic to get it, the above paragraph is sarcasm. If you want to change things, you need to prove it's necessary and beneficial. When you instead focus on juking numbers and suppressing opposition, the revelation of that activity does not make the positive case for change all that appealing.

Yes it is, because it doesn't--no more so than any other element or compound.

Ironically, the theory that CO2 has magical heat retaining capabilities was developed to explain why green houses are hot. This theory was disproved 140 years ago.

If CO2 did have the properties attributed to it, you could create a device that produced massive amounts of energy.

(I should also point out that if something retains heat, then the area around it will not get warmer. The theory that anything retains heat, ergo there is tangential warming is absurd on the face of it.)

Ritzy Brassiere: "For instance, the irony of listening to someone from Omaha yammering on about how not doing enough to keep wind energy from penetrating the mix lest we experience a foreboding and imminent economic collapse is overwhelmingly ridiculous. No thinking person could come up with such a stance, only an ideologue."

It's interesting that you accuse me of being against alternative energy. I don't recall expressing any such thing. However, despite being located in a "wind-rich" state, the metropolis which I call home is dependent on natural gas for most of its energy needs.

If cap and trade were to be enacted, our local utility would undoubtedly be impacted, and pass on the cost to its customers, i.e., me. Perhaps you have a lot of extra money laying around for additional energy costs, but if my utility bill went up, that would mean less money for me to spend "stimulating" the local economy (and aimlessly cruising around in my SUV)!

I'm sure a person of your deep intellect understands the concept of "marginal costs." Even in the wind-rich state of Nebraska we have many businesses that are hanging on by a mere thread. Any negative impact to their income could have devastating consequences, especially since the geniuses in our state legislature outlawed smoking in bars and restaurants.

This reaffirms my conviction that ultimately scientists will behave as scientists -- demand ALL the data, reproduce the experiments.

But scientists are people, and people act as people. Eventually, within a scientific community, the scientists within the persons must prevail over the non-scientist, the faith-led portion of the person, or the community collapses as a scientific community and becomes something else, as Gore would have it, a perverse distortion of a real scientific community that has served Western Civilization so well to the point of characterizing it. One that has extra-scientific aims in mind. Gore et al would replace traditional faith with hybrid facile "convenient" semi-science/transnational government/faith. The real scientists appear to be pushing back and I am filled with glee. This difference of opinion is the science I have come to understand, not the obviously political show-the-kids-the-movie-three-times this-discussion-is-over shut-off-that-guy's-mic kind that we've been treated. I hope these bastards fail, and fail hard.

At no point did I simultaneously post under multiple identities. The name before changed to the name that exists now, just as if someone went to court and changed their name.

Here's Ritzy Brassiere offering a thoughtful opening salvo to dazzle his opponent followed by the usual straw man. ROTFL

At no time did I suggest that you "simultaneously" [posted] under multiple identities. I claim that you use "multiple identities on the same site to convey an illusion of support for [your] views," you know, like the other overbearing, megalomaniacal lefty troll who posts here, "He Who Must Not Be Named."

I suggest you have no original thoughts. You accuse us of having no original thoughts.

I suggest you only repeat ideological talking points. You accuse us of only repeating ideological talking points.

I suggest you have a neurotic personality disorder. You accuse me of having a delusional thought disorder.

We point out Obama's shortcomings. You accuse Bush of worse shortcomings.

Althouse posts about the bias and bunker mentality of AGW scientists. You accuse CATO, et al, of the same.

The biggest 'greenhouse gas' by far is *water vapor*, by much more than an order of magnitude.

There's a helluva lot more H2O in the atmosphere than CO2, plus the H2O actually absorbs a much broader swath of the IR part of the spectrum.

Without even worrying about 'models', the very fundamental physics is against manmade CO2 (which is a minority of the CO2 anyway) being *the* culprit, the deciding factor.

And as far as the models go, the H2O cycle is highly dynamic and it, in conjunction with the related issue of cloud cover, is only poorly modeled at best. Sometimes they've even admitted it, although they usually try to pretend that the water vapor factor doesn't even exist.

So we have very basic problems underlying the theoretical basis of the vaunted models, and we have the actual experience of them being *wrong* about the last decade.

Weak foundation plus bad empirical performance = *zip*. Yet we are constantly told to ignore what is in front of our eyes in the sure knowledge that 'the larger warming tend will continue' when there is no remaining basis for that claim.

Utter self-serving, un-scientific BS.

A big part of the problem is that the AGW believing public is still stuck on that illustration in their 4th grade science textbook entitled "The Balance of Nature", that left the shallow and wrong impression that 'nature' has a static equilibrium when all evidence shows it does not.

Personally, I find most interesting the email where one of the culprits privately acknowledges that temperatures were just as warm between 800-1000AD as they are now -- and he excluded those data points from a paper. Apart from other shenanigans in massaging the data itself to create his famous hockey stick, Mann very carefully kept that previous warmer period off the left side of his chart to make the current(rather 1990s) small bit of warming look 'unprecedented'.

Just to point out that a. MUL is BSR is RB is ... He has admitted as much.b. At no point has MUL/BSR/RB implied or stated that his real identity is attached to any of his posting namesc. At no point has MUL/BSR/RB attached any data to show his expert status to make the claims he makes.d. At no point has MUL/BSR/RB shown his original work or research.

It's not as much fun as it used to be. He's such a pompous jackass that it's a pleasure taking him down a notch or two. But (1) he never seems to get it when he's been totally pwned, and (2) he's always back the next day with the same blithering nonsense.

Ritmo...The everybody does it defense is a classic Bill Clinton method of damage control when outed. It has some truth to it. Lots of people do it, not everybody. Some of my early dis-illusionment came from learning the latest Biology and related medical science in my College and among my friends at Medical school( a well known top of the line school ) and at the CDC. The PR releases from the institutions often said something different from the truth and seemed designed to get influence in the media. When I asked about these things, the reply was basically that we do not tell all our secrets in the PR releases, silly boy. OK. But among the scientists themselves the idea of " a Long March of intentional Deception" was never contemplated. They were not Maoists. The "Death of Communism", as NPR phrases it, took place in 1989 to 1993. That was also the Birth time of this "environmental" International Power Grab. You are smart enough to see that, are you not?

It takes a huge idiot to make an accusation of sock puppetry when no attempt at confusing the idiot as to one's identity was the aim. In other words, what Paco Wove said.

Ridiculing and ad hominems are not examples of pwning.

Chemicals have physical properties that can be confirmed. To not realize this as a point separate from, but related to, large-scale atmospheric effects, is to admit one's ignorance of chemistry and physics.

It is so challenging to get past the inundation of physical insults so as to find any actual points, as to make engagement not worth it. At least half of the commenters past my 3:25 PM comment are so obsessed with who I am that it is clear they have no use for actual arguments and even see argumentation itself as a political game.